bld's log

The main purpose of this forum; tell us what goals you're working on.
User avatar
bld
Posts: 19 | Thanks: 6
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:01 pm
Name: Ben
Goal: See signature
Age: 25
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom

Sun Dec 19, 2021 7:37 pm

I have a new car and life is looking up again!

12-19 December
What did I do to achieve my goals:
* Took delivery of my new car. My old car was a major weakness, I was ashamed to drive it because it was tatty. It was like a wearing an ill fitting t-shirt with stains. My new car is not flashy or extragavant, but rather like a well fitting clean t-shirt.
* Completed 2 weightlifting sessions. Weightlfting is a major source of joy: I enjoy being able to use my muscles and my body and I love the physical act of lifting weights.
* I sent christmas cards to all of my neighbours. While writing them, I needed to look for an old WhatsApp conversation to match a name with an address. I realised that I had unread messages in conversations I had archived. As a result, I've now got in touch with an old friend who messaged me out of the blue a few months ago. This is great example of serendipidity - had I not decided to write christmas cards, I wouldn't have got in touch with my old friend.

What hindered me:
* At the beginning of the week I was stressed because the car dealer wasn't responding to my phonecalls. I kept telling myself to be stoic, but I felt awful up until the point where I actually took ownership of the new vehicle. It would be better if I did not let external events outside of my control have so much influence on my emotions and state of mind.
* Increasing social restrictions are somewhat of a threat. It would not surprise me if the gym becomes closed in the near future.

What should I focus on next week:
* Go hard in the gym and at work. Make every session count.
* Prepare for time off over christmas. Make a loose schedule for what I will do on the days where I am off over christmas.
My goals and focuses (as of 03/01/2022):
  • Approach a complete stranger and tell her that she's cute
  • Have 6 high quality images that I can use for a dating profile
  • Lift 1/2/3/4 (60kg OHP, 100kg bench, 140kg squat, 180kg deadlift)
  • Run a marathon
  • Prepare to move to a city
User avatar
bld
Posts: 19 | Thanks: 6
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:01 pm
Name: Ben
Goal: See signature
Age: 25
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom

Mon Jan 03, 2022 11:28 pm

Over the past 2 weeks I have thought a lot about what my goals are for the upcoming year and I've come up with the 5 that you can see in my signature. This isn't a comprehensive list of goals, I have goals in my career too, but I don't think there is any value writing about them on this forum. I came here for the Tinder guide: dating/sex/romance/cold approaching/whatever is predominantly why I am here so I am going to focus on that in this log.

From now on my posts in this log will be less structured. I aim to continue posting regularly (once a week or once every two weeks), so as not to "forget" about these goals, even if I have made little progress towards them. I'm simply going to write about things that happened in my pursuit of these goals.

-----------------------------

My goals:
* Approach a complete stranger and tell her that she's cute - I thought that I could do this but I was wrong. I will write about my first(?) experience trying to cold approach below.
* Have 6 high quality images that I can use for a dating profile - I have 3 images which are "OK" (my profile picture is one of them (if you think its bad then you should see the other 997 which didn't make it...)). I want a bigger bank of photos to choose from. I have some ideas - a professional photoshoot, one of me running, one of me topless, one of me at a social event... Basically I need to go outside with my camera/somebody else's camera and do things.
* Lift 1/2/3/4 (60kg OHP, 100kg bench, 140kg squat, 180kg deadlift) - Currently I can do 47.5kg OHP, 65kg bench , 85kg squat and 82.5kg deadlift. I think I can hit these numbers if I keep training as I am - I'm tracking my lifts and constantly progressing. I've nearly finished a 12 week program and I'll talk about this more once I finish it.
* Run a marathon - It would be cool to be able to run a marathon. Currently I can do a half. This one may wait until next year.
* Prepare to move to a city - I live in the countryside which is nice but isn't doing me any favours when it comes to dating. Moving to a city will increase my dating prospects. I'm in no particular rush to do this - when the time is right it will happen. In the meantime I can do things such as build some savings for moving, get a suit and interview for new positions (may not be necessary...), and spend time in cities that I'm considering moving to.

All of these goals are synchronous - working on one helps the others. The two fitness goals are like that so that I don't become skinny runner, or a fat weightlifter. The real aim is to build a good physique. Taking photos, exploring cities and cold approaches are all very closely related. I don't want my online dating photos to trick people into thinking I have an interesting social life and do interesting things, instead I want to actually do those things. I haven't set any dates on these goals. I want to achieve them badly enough that I will consistently make progress towards them. Honestly if I could forget about fucking cold approaching I would.

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My first time "cold approaching"


On the 29th December I went out for the first time with the deliberate intention of cold approaching. I took a train to the nearest big city and on the way I wrote down in a notepad, "Mission: get numbers" I also wrote "Don't expect to get any numbers". I felt like I was in the movie The Matrix. I thought to myself, Everyone else at this shopping centre is here to consume products, I'm here to learn how to manufacture romance with strangers. I am so smart, I understand social dynamics on a level that most of these NPC's have no idea of. I tried to tell myself such thinking was silly but on some level I do (wrongly?) think it is like that.

I didn't have the courage to speak to anyone. I just walked around the streets, constantly at war with myself. The monkey in my head would tell me: She's too old. She's too young. She's too pretty. She's not pretty enough. There are too many people here. There aren't enough people here. I knew that this was narrative was ridiculous but in the split second where I would make eye contact with a girl this is what my mind would say. And so I'd immediately look away and think to myself What a stupid thing to think. Next time I'm not going to think that. I'm going to just act.... But the next time the same thing would happen. And this went on for a couple of hours before I skulked back to the train station and went home.

I've done leafletting in public before for various companies and organizations. I've cold approached hundreds of strangers and tried to sell them some shitty product. But I couldn't approach a single person to sell them the prospect of dating me. I thought it would be "easy". But it definitely wasn't. I felt depressed afterwards.

Its so simple isn't it? Just walk up to someone and say "hey" and let your brain figure out the rest. But if you can't even say "hey" then what can you do? I guess Andy's advice of "stay out on the front lines" is the best answer. Maybe meditation could help? Perhaps the depression I felt came from a realisation that I have a very long way to go before I see any tangible results in the form of dates/lays/relationships from cold approaching. I think that running a marathon will be trivial compared to this.
My goals and focuses (as of 03/01/2022):
  • Approach a complete stranger and tell her that she's cute
  • Have 6 high quality images that I can use for a dating profile
  • Lift 1/2/3/4 (60kg OHP, 100kg bench, 140kg squat, 180kg deadlift)
  • Run a marathon
  • Prepare to move to a city
User avatar
Squilliam
Posts: 2064 | Thanks: 362
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:57 am
Goal: Be happy
Age: 24
Motto: Pain is temporary. Greatness lasts forever

Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:18 am

Ah, man, cold approaching is really hard. I don't blame you for failing. I asked 5 girls for the time yesterday, and that took me almost everything I had.

Maybe try approaching strangers in environments where there is more of a mutual topic that you can start a conversation about? For instance, I "approached" some girl at the rock climbing gym the other day.
check out my blog: https://squilzpursuit.wordpress.com/

- Do 1000 approaches by end of 2024 (~350/1000)
- Get laid from daygame
- Learn game and stop being a social autist
User avatar
bld
Posts: 19 | Thanks: 6
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:01 pm
Name: Ben
Goal: See signature
Age: 25
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom

Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:37 pm

Squilliam wrote:
Tue Jan 04, 2022 12:18 am
Ah, man, cold approaching is really hard. I don't blame you for failing. I asked 5 girls for the time yesterday, and that took me almost everything I had.

Maybe try approaching strangers in environments where there is more of a mutual topic that you can start a conversation about? For instance, I "approached" some girl at the rock climbing gym the other day.
Well done on approaching 5 girls and asking for the time! Anything that "takes almost everything" is worth doing.

For me, I've asked strangers for the time/directions many times before and now that is not a challenge. It feels socially acceptable to do that, whereas approaching a girl and telling her she's cute doesn't. It is easy for me to write on a forum that I'm vastly overestimating the likelihood and severity of bad things happening from doing that, but in the moment, my logical brain switches off and the reptile brain screams at me to not do it. Probably I told a girl she was cute when I was a teenager and she laughed at me or something, and now I have to undo the "that was painful, never do that again" neural programming that formed as a result.

I'm really not sure how to undo the programming. The best idea that I've come up with so far is to keep increasing my SMV until the universe has given me enough positive signals to overwhelm that voice that says "don't approach". I'm not sure I'd be able to handle hearing hundreds of "No, go away/Please leave me alone/You're a creep"'s right now. I think I would internalise it. A few months ago, I felt depressed when I downloaded dating apps and had no success. There's always a "blackpill mindset" lurking in the background of my psyche that is looking for fuel. Maybe I should make more of an effort to meditate...

You may be right on the environment thing. Something that appeals to me about approaching in shopping centres is that they're not environments I particularly value. If an interaction was to go horrible wrong it wouldn't matter. If I get banned from a shopping centre it wouldn't bother me. If I got banned from my gym, for example, that would bother me a lot. The way I'm looking at it, and it could be flawed, is that I should practice expressing sexual desire towards women who are outside of my social circles, and outside of the environments that matter to me. If I come across as creepy (very likely as I am very uncalibrated) it won't really matter. Ultimately, I'd like to become calibrated and confident enough to express sexual desire towards women I encounter in my day to day life.

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Fitness progress
Last week I finished the 12 week weightlifting program I was following. I compiled an album of before/after pictures:

I'm pleased with the progress. I look leaner and fitter. My bodyweight stayed the same, my cardiovascular performance stayed about the same, but my lifts went up:

Predicted 1RM (kg):
OHP: 33.33 -> 48
Bench: 55.49 -> 64.58
Squat: 53.32 -> 87.99
Deadlift: 69.99 -> 87.99

There's still a long way to go before I hit my 1/2/3/4 goal but I'm making progress every week. I'm really enjoying the fitness part of my life at the moment.
My goals and focuses (as of 03/01/2022):
  • Approach a complete stranger and tell her that she's cute
  • Have 6 high quality images that I can use for a dating profile
  • Lift 1/2/3/4 (60kg OHP, 100kg bench, 140kg squat, 180kg deadlift)
  • Run a marathon
  • Prepare to move to a city
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